Phila. Takeover Deadline Marked by Protests

As top deputies for Philadelphia's mayor and Pennsylvania's governor
parried last week over how the state will take over the city's schools,
hundreds of chanting citizens stopped rush-hour traffic to demonstrate
their opposition to hiring private management to run their neediest
schools.

With an unusually tight lid of secrecy clamped onto the weeklong
negotiations, little was known of the exchange between teams dispatched
by Democratic Mayor John F. Street and Republican Gov. Mark S.
Schweiker. The state was expected to take control of the schools as
early as Dec. 1, but the outcome of the talks was to dictate just how
cordial that takeover would be.

"It's hard to say how it will go," Steve Aaron, the governor's
spokesman, said as the final day of negotiationsFriday, Nov. 30began.
"Differences remain, absolutely. But a real deadline can make it
happen."

One potential roadblock to a state takeover emerged last Thursday,
when a coalition of labor groups filed suit in the Pennsylvania Supreme
Court in a bid to block the state's school takeover law. The plaintiffs
objected to the law on many grounds, including the powers of a school
reform commission—which would be appointed by the governor and
the mayor to run the schools—to tax citizens for the schools and
to abrogate employee contracts. As of early Friday morning, the case
had not been heard.

'Not for Sale'

As the mayor's and governor's teams met in a Center City office in
Philadelphia, demonstrations unfolded on the street. On Wednesday of
last week, activists carrying signs reading "Our Children Are Not for
Sale" took over an eight-lane street in a march from the State Office
Building to City Hall. They arrived as Mayor Street, surrounded by
local children, was lighting the city Christmas tree, but no words were
exchanged.

The next day, several hundred students staged a demonstration at
City Hall and Mayor Street met with a few of them to hear their
concerns. That evening, students formed a human chain around the city's
enormous school district headquarters in a symbolic defense against
privatization.

While few dispute that the nation's eighth-largest school system is
in dire need of fiscal and academic help, there has been substantial
disagreement over how best to provide that help to its 210,000
students.

Gov. Schweiker withdrew that part of his proposal Nov. 20, revising
the role of New York City-based Edison from decisionmaker to key
consultant. But the possibility that 60 of the city's worst-performing
schools still could be privatized has attracted national attention and
sparked intense local debate.

"A for-profit entity should not be running public schools," said
Veronica Joyner, who founded a high-performing charter high school in a
poor, predominantly African-American North Philadelphia neighborhood
and runs an advocacy group called Parents United for Better
Schools.

"They are going to cut corners for profit," she charged, "and not
have the best interests of our children at heart."

Wendell A. Harris, who has four children in city schools, believes
privatization is a "ploy" rather than an attempt at true reform, which
would have to tackle inequities in state funding that leave city
schools cash- strapped compared with their suburban counterparts.

"Our problems are based on revenue and resources," he said. "If they
don't have the resources for us in public education, how can they have
it for us in privatization?"

Draining Resources?

Even in northeastern Philadelphia, where some of the city's
best-performing schools are located, many parents don't like the idea
of private management. Lois Yampolsky, whose two sons graduated from
Northeast High School, said she worries that if a profit-conscious
company manages city schools in needy areas, resources from
better-financed schools could be drained to sustain those programs.

She has called for resistance "by any means necessary," invoking the
language of black civil-rights activist Malcolm X.

"When you have thousands of people coming together, it shows a
diverse group that says, 'We don't want you here,' and the governor
would not be well-advised to ignore that," Ms. Yampolsky said. "We're
going to be a bad dream. We're prepared to stay and fight."

But not everyone shared those sentiments. Vernard Johnson, whose
daughter attends a charter high school in southwestern Philadelphia,
said many other parents he knows think Edison should be given a chance.
At Edison's invitation, he and other parents visited schools the
company operates in Baltimore, Washington, and nearby Chester, Pa.

"I saw clean buildings, students walking single-file in the hallway,
kids engaged in learning in quiet classrooms," Mr. Johnson said. "As
leery and skeptical as I am about a corporation managing a school, I
was really impressed. If they come [to Philadelphia] with the same
model, determination, and authority that we saw, we can turn this
system around."

Some have worried that the five-member school reform commission
would be unable to provide an objective assessment of the district's
progress.

State Sen. Allyson Y. Schwartz, the Democratic chairwoman of the
Senate education committee, has proposed setting up a separate board
that would hire experts to appraise the district's academic and
financial progress.

If such an idea is not incorporated into the takeover agreement, she
said, she might introduce it as legislation.

Vol. 21, Issue 14, Page 5

Published in Print: December 5, 2001, as Phila. Takeover Deadline Marked by Protests

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